For a moment, Cynthia's words gave Nathaniel genuine pause. Just what had been the opportunity cost of his refusal to truly submit to the authority of Laughingwind's council? Would it have really changed anything? The squirrel maiden probably arranged for those warriors and the psychic to be at their "negotiation" well before they actually started talking. At the very least, she probably would have made good on those demands for tribute/reparations, but even if she didn't believe his claims about the Patron, was it possible that Laughingwind just might have been more receptive to being convinced or at least heeding words that would make preparations easier?
The moment of introspection passed the moment Cynthia mentioned money being made in "her" ports. That was what all this was about?
The change in Nathaniel's expression was subtle at first, but it only grew tighter and more strained with each passing second. As far as he could tell, while he and his expedition had been risking their lives to explore the Dark Continent, she had been lounging in her well-furnished island fortress ordering shipments of beer. If she was so concerned for the deal, so eager to beg the Forestfolk for trade, perhaps she should have come along for the negotiations rather than sending an assassin whose best advice was "take hostages". It must have been so easy for her to talk about throwing aside notions of basic dignity and justice while she smugly counted the imaginary fortune his effort might have made her.
That was all just gut-reaction. Relatively minor flares of irritation that the logical part of his brain recognized might have had little basis in reality. He wasn't kept appraised of her activities before or after discovering the Lentani presence in these lands, and Nathaniel knew better than most how much work the thoughts behind her near-constant writing could truly be.
But something broke in his eyes when she dismissed the Patron and the Syndicate as figments of his imagination. The woman with a psychic assassin at her right hand, one apparently conditioned to be an inhuman killing machine, did not believe it was possible for someone to use such gifts to amass power and influence...? Gods damn it! He thought she might have been reliable if only out of self-interest. But no...now that the chips were down, she was no better than the "savages" Laughingwind led.
All the memories game surging back to Nathaniel at once. His head pounded as if someone had just taken a hammer to it. Living through the Patron's atrocities, waking up night after night terrified that it wouldn't be him in his own body anymore if the Song struck just a bit harder, nearly losing Telai to Agatha's sadistic madness, nearly being kidnapped and...broken into something like the false priestess, watching every thing he'd tried to build here fall apart while her specter laughed from beyond the grave...
He wanted to shove it all into Cynthia's mind. To see how keen she was to lecture him when she had to actually live through it all, to make her and everyone else who just dismissed him as a weak, stupid child who stuck his nose into too many books to understand...!
Nathaniel audibly grunted and twitched as the pain intensified. The young man wasn't sure how much of it was mundane stress and how much of it was actually the song at work, but for a moment he could see the memories play out before him all at once and feel his consciousness churning like a cauldron about to boil over.
Nathaniel's eyes flickered over the letter marked with his family's crest. They narrowed in suspicion, but he said nothing.
"I'll take my chances in Newport," His tone was strained. All those thoughts were still raging in his mind. There was so much more he wanted to say, but...if he wouldn't beg or kowtow, the least the Brightland scion could do was not burn bridges behind him.
"Goodbye and good luck, Cynthia," Nathaniel was eager to leave. He wouldn't have pressed a hand to his pounding forehead until he was out of the Lentani and her agents' sights. He had...preparations of his own to begin making. The confrontation with Laughingwind had already pushed him this far, but this...chat with Cynthia erased the lingering doubts. He'd had enough negotiating from positions of weakness. From crawling to Alestra in the hopes she would help him master the Song rather than kill him, to Cynthia taking Newport and future tribute from him as "taxes", and finally seemingly everyone on this frontier knowing more about the Song and the powers it offered than him...